FicWad

It was the second that the music stopped, before the first of many shattering crashes, when I knew something wasn't right. I had been upstairs for the better part of two hours listening contently to him playing in the basement. While I busied myself folding laundry and taking care of the other household chores I taken on the relieve my mind of the situation at hand. Music occupied his mind, made it okay to not be drinking.

That's what he told me once. In rare instance of vulnerability not sparred by the consumption of his favorite liquor.

"Music is the only thing that keeps me sane." He paused, peering at me over a cup of coffee, "Music and you Mali."

I didn't tell him then, how much it meant to me that he'd added those last four words. Nor would I ever tell him. But it made it easier to stay, or maybe just harder to leave. I don't care to debate the difference. It would mean facing up to feelings I knew were wrong. Things that could never be. Though I knew repression isn't healthy, I can't worry about my state. I have to keep my focus on him. He is the only thing that is important.

A loud bang followed shortly by the sound of breaking glass broke the silence that had settled in around me since the music subsided. My head shot up at the noise, I quickly set aside the laptop, notes were no longer important.

I'm not sure I've ever moved quite as quickly as I did after hearing that crash.

"Patrick?" I called loudly as I reached the doorway to his lair. No answer followed, only another crash. This time wood breaking against metal, splintering into pieces.

"Patrick!" I yelled again going down the stairs as fast as my legs would allow without risking injury. When I rounded the corner at bottom I saw him, reaching for another guitar.

The room lay littered with remnants of the only thing that ever seemed to bring this man solice. The sight was enough to rob the oxygen from my lungs. Regaining composure I began to progress into the room.

"Patrick," I begged, moving slowly toward him, "please put that down."

"No." His voice came as a low growl, something I'd never heard before and hoped to never again. I'd never seen him violent. He was too gentle. Even under the influence, which I guess he's under now, he was either silly and happy or sad and melancholy. But never violent.

He stepped back, raising the guitar to smash it against the nearest hard surface. The piano say covered in debris, keys missing and scattered about the floor around the bench.

"Please," I begged once again, cautiously reaching out to place my hand on his arm. He spun half around on his heals at my touch. The anger he once held in his delicate features fell and he was broken. He dropped the instrument, instantly it hit the ground with a dull crack. Broken, but salvageable, much like him.

"I'm sorry. So sorry. Mali, I" His words were stuttered and sentences incomplete. He fell to the floor on his knees before me. I knelt to his level, locking my eyes with his.

"Shh, its okay Trick, tell me what happened." I brought him to me, wrapping both arms around his torso slowly running my fingers through his hair. He hiccupped, tears now soaking my shirt.

"Everything is wrong Mali, and...and I can't fix it." His body shook with another sob and he nuzzled his face closer into the crook of my neck, slightly muting his words.

"That's why I'm here, remember? To help you fix it," I began pulling back so that I could make eye contact, "but you have to talk to me. Help me, help you. Right?"

He nods shortly before placing his head back on my shoulder. I let him lay there in my arms for a few moments calming down before I asked what I knew to be an extremely loaded question.

"What happened Patrick? Why did it come to this?" I'd made this plea, and given this speech a thousand times or more. To drunk Patrick, to sober Patrick, to guilty Patrick, and to depressed Patrick. None of them could ever answer.

He sniffed hard, clearing his throat in the process, " I just could take it anymore Mal."

"Take what Patrick?" I asked, pulling back so that our eyes could meet. If ever in my life I thought it was possible to see straight through a person, now would be that occasion. His every flaw was there for me to examine, hidden only slightly behind blood shot blue-green eyes.

"The stares. And the voices. It was all supposed to stop." His voice was trembling, he sounded more like a wounded five-year-old than a man of twenty-two years.

"Stop when, Patrick?" I inquired gently, lowering his head back to my shoulder and continuing to run my fingers through the mess of dirty blonde hair.

"After high school, I thought when I graduated that Saturday afternoon that it was over. The ridicule, the jokes, all of it. Done, we were adults now. But Mali, I was wrong. It didn't stop them. There were more of them in the real world." He paused momentarily in his manic rant to breath, "They were everywhere I worked, or shopped or ate. I couldn't escape them. So, I drank. It made me numb. I didn't have to hear them or feel their words anymore. But then it got harder. So, I drank more. Then they sent me to rehab, the only thing I could control there was my appetite. So I wouldn't eat. Silent protest. And when I couldn't do that anymore, I'd eat and throw it all up. I proved to them I was in control. Then I lost it all. Rehab didn't work. I came home, and I still drank. Still threw up my food. Then you cam Mali. And I thought maybe that I could do it. But I was wrong. I fell in love with you and that just made it all worse. I don't want to be like this Mali. I don't like this person that I've become." He was in hysterics by now, rambling with shaken words.

I sat back, attempting to let all of what he'd just confessed. I did the only thing I could I kept running my fingers through his hair. But at this point I'd lost track of who I was trying to comfort with that action, Patrick or myself.

"It'll all be okay." I whisper with my lips pressed to his forehead, "Everything will be just fine." If only I knew who I was trying to convince.